Dead Horses stopped by the Oshkosh Northwestern office to play a couple songs for the staff before they return to Oshkosh, Friday, July 31, as a part of Main Street Music Festival.

On July 17, Sarah Vos, lead singer, Daniel Wolf, bass, and Peter Raboin, guitar, chatted with us about their brand new music, losing a fiddler and going from “locally known” to playing concerts across the country.

Wolff: Us three have been playing music together going on three years. We’re recently a trio; we were a quartet up until a couple months back. That’s a new thing for us.

ONW: How did that change your music style?

Vos: I think the fiddle was very prominent in all of our songs, so not having it definitely changes what we’re doing. I definitely miss some of the fiddle sounds, but at the same time, I think we’re all really excited about the space that there is and doing something new. I would say it’s going great.

Wolff: I think this could be the happiest I’ve ever been personally.

Raboin: It’s the best morale that we’ve had, and it’s the best music that we’ve played so far. Removing one person changes everything, and in this instance it worked out really well.

ONW: And the songs you played today are new, you said?

Wolff: Brand new. The first one we just started playing this morning, pretty much. We’ve practiced it a little together in the living room, but first time performing.

ONW: As you have gone through all these phases, how has your music evolved with you?

Wolff: Overall, it’s more focused. There were a couple songwriters, and now Sarah is the chief songwriter. She writes all the lyrics, the melody and even the song chords, and then we all work on the songs together based off of what she’s written.

Vos: I definitely feel like there’s a great maturity that we didn’t have before, but I’m sure five years from now I’ll be looking at what we’re doing now, and I’ll be like, “we were babies!”

We go places regularly where no one knows who we are so we’re still pulling ourselves up the wall, scraping our way up because we want to play music.

Raboin: Some people around here might think we’re rock stars but just two weeks ago we were playing in front of ten people.

Wolff: It’s cool, sometimes we get booked to do a show where we are in a brand new area and the crowd is just crazy.

Vos: Or we’ll go somewhere we don’t think anyone will know us, and there’ll be people there that know us and know our songs. They must have had our CD somehow, and that’s crazy to us.

Raboin: We’ve built this fan base, this following, around the bluegrass scene, yet we’ve never really fit into it as well as other bands have, which says to me that we have the potential to go other directions, too. As we’re maturing, I think we’re moving away from that a bit.

ONW: How would you describe your style?

Vos: I have called us soul-folk, but I don’t know. Americana is a general term that describes people playing acoustic instruments, but I kind of like the whole soul-folk thing.

ONW: What’s next for you guys?

Vos: Make another album is in the very near future. Do a lot more national touring, keep meeting people and making friends. I would like to focus on our shows. Especially in Wisconsin, I care about how that experience is going to be for the person who comes. Paying back people who have been coming and supporting us for years.

Wolff: Now we’re getting opportunities where the show has potential to be great, so we want to take it seriously, make it the best it can be because these people have expectations, and I think that’s a good thing.

ONW: Have you done many shows outside of Wisconsin?

Vos: We are frequently traveling between Wisconsin and Minnesota. We recorded our album in California, and have played in Tennessee, Maryland, Chicago, Montana.

ONW: You’ve played Main Street Music Festival before. What do you enjoy about this festival?

Vos: We’re very excited to be a part of it and very proud Oshkosh is doing a festival like that. All this stuff happening with local music that’s putting it in front of people’s faces is awesome because it is going on all the time but a lot of people don’t know about it.

ONW: How does it compare to other concerts and festivals?

Wolff: We’ve been out to all of these venues in the past, so it’s cool to see them fill up and being utilized and see all the bands in Oshkosh plus the surrounding area come and play.

Vos: There’s not really many venues to play in Oshkosh, so it’s fun they do this festival where they just set up venues everywhere.

ONW: Is there anything you’re looking forward to with Main Street?

Wolff: Our show of course.

Vos: I know I’m excited to see all of the other bands. We will have just gotten back from Montana, and then come over here and see great bands all day, a lot of bands we don’t get to see very often because we’re always gone playing.

ONW: Is there anything else you want to say?

Wolff: We have our LPs out now.

Vos: That weekend is going to kind of be our Fox Valley vinyl release. “Space and Time” is on vinyl for the first time, pretty much. On some level that’s like our Oshkosh vinyl release, and we’re really excited about that.